[LinuxPPS] ntptime status - relaunch of that issue

[Michael Meier]

> I have checked that the current clock source is tsc and that 3 different
> are available in total: tsc, acpi_pm and jiffies

So no really good source (for PentiumM) available. No surprise it is 
jittering.

> The current machines, running 2.4 kernel + PPSKit are Pentium III with
> 512MB Ram...

Why not reuse them? Unless you have >100000 clients, that CPU "power" 
would suffice.

> The Idea to use Pentium M's was to limit power usage.... the industrial
> PC I'm using now has a Pentium M and 2 GB RAM is using 80W at most...
> So: how about an Intel ATOM?

I actually tested an Atom (N270, 1.6GHz) based mainboard (MSI 945 GSE) 
as NTP last week. The TSC of the Atom works properly (unlike Pentium M), 
and it had no problem with handling the 50000 clients. Not bad for <20 
watts.
-- 
Michael Meier, HPC Services
Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg
Regionales Rechenzentrum Erlangen
Martensstrasse 1, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
Tel.: +49 9131 85-28973, Fax: +49 9131 302941
michael.meier at rrze.uni-erlangen.de
www.rrze.uni-erlangen.de/hpc/